The mechanical properties of fungal cell walls are largely determined by composition and mutual cross-linking of their macromolecular components. Previous work showed that the Crh proteins are required for the formation of cross-links between chitin and glucan at the Saccharomyces cerevisiae cell wall. In the present study, the proteins encoded by CRH1 and CRH2 were heterologously expressed in Pichia pastoris and a sensitive fluorescence in vitro soluble assay was devised for determination of their transglycosylating activities. Both proteins act as chitin transglycosylases; they use soluble chitin derivatives, such as carboxymethyl chitin, glycol-chitin and/or N-acetyl chito-oligosaccharides of DP (degree of polymerization)≥5 as the oligoglycosyl donors, and oligosaccharides derived from chitin, β-(1,3)-glucan (laminarin) and β-(1,6)-glucan (pustulan), fluorescently labelled with sulforhodamine or FITC as acceptors. The minimal number of intact hexopyranose units required by Crh1 and/or Crh2 in the molecule of the acceptor oligosaccharide was two and the effectivity of the acceptor increased with the increasing length of its oligosaccharide chain. Products of the transglycosylation reactions were hybrid molecules composed of the acceptor and portions of carboxymethyl chitin attached to its non-reducing end. Both proteins exhibited a weak chitinolytic activity in different assays whereby the ratio of endo- compared with exo-chitinase activity was approximately 4-fold higher in Crh1 than in Crh2. The pH optimum of both enzymes was 3.5 and the optimum temperature was 37°C. The results obtained in vitro with different fluorescently labelled oligosaccharides as artificial chitin acceptors corroborated well with those observed in vivo.
α-Galactosidases are assigned to the class of hydrolases and the subclass of glycoside hydrolases (GHs). They belong to six GH families and include the only characterized α-galactosidases from yeasts (GH 27, Saccharomyces cerevisiae). The present study focuses on an investigation of the lactose-inducible α-galactosidase produced by Papiliotrema flavescens. The enzyme was present on the surface of cells and in the cytosol. Its temperature optimum was about 60 °C and the pH optimum was 4.8; the pH stability ranged from 3.2 to 6.6. This α-galactosidase also exhibited transglycosylation activity. The cytosol α-galactosidase with a molecular weight about 110 kDa, was purified using a combination of liquid chromatography techniques. Three intramolecular peptides were determined by the partial structural analysis of the sequences of the protein isolated, using MALDI-TOF/TOF mass spectrometry. The data obtained recognized the first yeast α-galactosidase, which belongs to the GH 36 family. The bioinformatics analysis and homology modeling of a 210 amino acids long C-terminal sequence (derived from cDNA) confirmed the correctness of these findings. The study was also supplemented by the screening of capsular cryptococcal yeasts, which produce the surface lactose-inducible α- and β-galactosidases. The production of the lactose-inducible α-galactosidases was not found to be a general feature within the yeast strains examined and, therefore, the existing hypothesis on the general function of this enzyme in cryptococcal capsule rearrangement cannot be confirmed.
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